Sunday, December 19, 2021

Maurice Casey (1976) on the Testament of Abraham and Whether it Identifies Abel as the "Son of Man" of Daniel 7

  

The Testament of Abraham.

 

There is no trace of the book of Daniel in this work. One passage has been drawn into the Son of Man debate by Flusser, who comments "According to the apocryphal Test. Abraham the son of man is literally Adam's son Abel who was killed by the wicked Cain, for God desired that every man be judged by a man (the identification is based upon a verbal understanding that the son of man in Hebrew is ben-Adam).” This is misleading. The term υιος ανθρωπου does not occur here at all. Abel is described in ch xiii as υιος Αδαμ, but this is a literal description of his universally recognized relationship to Ada, and if this passage is a direct translation of a Hebrew original, it is clear that the translator was right to understand בן (ה)אדם like this. This does not constitute identification of anything with anything else. The statement πας ανθρωπος εξ ανθρωπου κριθησεται explains why judgment is being carried out by a human rather than a supernatural being, the contrast being with the divine statement εγω ου κρινω ημας. It was never intended to explain why the man in question is Abel rather than any other man. It is to be concluded that this passage provides no evidence of a Jewish "Son of Man Concept". (Philip Maurice Casey, The interpretation of Daniel VII in Jewish and patristic literature and in the New Testament: an approach to the Son of Man problem [PhD Dissertation; Durham University, 1976], 422)